Mine.
I wasn’t alone:
But I’m not happy about it. That’ll teach me (I hope).
Here is the consummate article on the whole tRump thing, I go so far as to say.
https://the.ink/p/the-illness-he-is
Read that and you’ll have a really good understanding of the ghastly maelstrom that is the current situation in the US.
Or perhaps don’t, and skip away happily ignorant.
Me, I don’t buy it. It’s just too convenient that tRump and Melania have Covid-19. It gets him out of some dicey forthcoming situations.
Unhappily, it also means he’s back calling the shots. You KNOW he’s going to demand that the election be postponed, and who knows what else ?!
But I’m almost past it all. If the US of A can’t ensure that media coverage is even-handed – and it isn’t – then it’s no wonder tRump can just go on doing whatever he feels like to the Constitution (of course, with Barr’s help).
There’s never going to be another year as frightful as 2020, for which even a halfwit can be grateful.
And yet .. what if tRump and Barr manage to skew the election and he hangs on it there ?
Then 2020 would pale into insignificance.
.. exactly what the problem is for me here – cf https://wp.me/p6zYMn-53e.
It can be encapsulated within five words:
I AM NOT IN CONTROL.
For the first time in my adult life, I am living in a place where I do not call the shots.
That is so not me that I find it absolutely astounding to understand, now and not earlier than now, that I hadn’t grasped why I have been so unhappy over the last few months.
I am not living, as it were, proactively: I am always behind, running after things in reaction.
My mail is missing ? – it’s in their “disinfecting” room somewhere, but they won’t search until they find it. I’m going to have to create a stink again and turn up every day ’round at the security check-in until someone pulls his finger out and takes another look.
My kitchen range-hood won’t work ? – the person in charge of this kind of thing takes the filter off to have it put through the main house dishwasher. She does not accept that the filter is not the problem: she says, in a polite but unmistakably condescending fashion, that no-one else’s range-hood has ever given trouble .. The phrase hangs in the air.
A family decides – in spite of Geelong’s being under Stage 3 restrictions – to visit on Fathers’ Day and bring loudly shouting children to play in the very small “grassed” area between these units ? There is no-one for me to speak to about this infuriating fact because it’s Sunday; and I can scarcely address the vile children, as none of the other residents appears to give a shit. I must respond as does everyone else.
If those examples appear petty to you, you have an entirely different mind-set from mine. To me they are insufferable.
I am not in control of how I live, and I can’t live like that.
I should never have come to an institution like this; and I would never have thought of doing so had I not been approached with an offer.
It seemed like a godsend at the time, getting me out of a lease that was problematic. And there you begin to see: I am a difficult bloody woman, and I don’t like to be under anyone’s control. That time it was the RE agent, who represented irresponsible owners and who had told me lies when I was looking over the place about new carpet and re-painting. I successfully obtained – eventually – the new carpet by taking them to VCat; but the re-painting was never going to happen. I don’t like finding myself completely stymied – especially in the light of having been lied to.
Having long since found myself among the invisible (read: “old”) people, it’s hard enough living a life that can be described as satisfactory; and my Damascus moment of a few hours ago – it’s currently 3:30am ! – has shown me, inter plura alia, that it is far, far from that.
I am posting about it because I want to drive myself to DO something ..
Obviously I am going to have to move; and equally obviously I do not know to where. Or how. Moving is fearfully expensive. Shall I just walk away and leave everything behind ? – throw it out ? Try to sell it ? Donate it ? Move into someone’s furnished rental ? Where ? HOW to get rid of all my own stuff ? Surely there are some things I want to keep ?
My head is spinning a bit.
But I’m not slowly going bonkers, as I had worried deeply that I was.
I’m just totally frustrated and – surprise, surprise ! – angry.
I am an angry person, under the humour. I’ve been this way since January 29th 2005: holding to myself a deep-seated anger that what happened then ended one life and destroyed the other. He didn’t want to leave me and I didn’t want him to leave me; and maybe it all comes back to that ..
But at least I know, now, that my life is totally unsatisfactory and I am going to have to do something about it.
Anyone who’s known me for any length of time is aware that I have a Reluctant Gut – one reluctant to settle down quietly for any lengthy period, and one that insists on making its presence felt fairly often, as it has done since the mid-’90s. Then, it was so reluctant to be ignored as to be responsible for my being delivered to Emergency at RPAH and, after a fair bit of this and that, to see me relieved of my gall-bladder – which turned out not to’ve actually been the problem. 
Couple of years later it struck again and, there being no gall-bladder to blame, the gut saw me undergo an ERCP – not the last, btw; and the bile duct wasn’t the problem either.
Since then there have been Episodes of its reluctance to behave normally, leading eventually to my consulting that well-known oracle, Dr Google. He it was who led me to find out about LPR (when I was satisfying myself that GORD is definitely nothing to do with the problem/s) – laryngopharyngeal reflux. Seeing as how I have and exhibit every single symptom of this affliction I am perfectly convinced I am cursed with it; but alas, no GP in Geelong has ever heard of it, and is reluctant to read the highly informative paper I keep printing out and handing over. I have reached, I’m only too aware, a stalemate: I can’t get medical help for it until (if ever) I find a doctor who knows what’s going down.
So. I have found my own help, that of my younger sister down in Tasmania.
On the phone to her the other day, I was talking about my recent comprehensive blood tests (de rigueur at this stage of life !) and mentioned cholesterol results. This trigger sent her off into waves of rage – or maybe fits ? – anyway, it triggered her to tell me all about The Great Cholesterol Myth. Fascinating stuff !! – and here’s an Australian link to it that I remember caused a HUGE shit-storm at the time ..
Briefly, you can forget about your cholesterol levels forever.
From there one proceeds – OK, then: I proceeded – via both “The Big Fat Surprise” and “The Carnivore Code” – to learn of the things I’d been eating wrong. Or not eating wrong. If you get my drift.
I have ceased being vegetarian.
It was never for health reasons that I took it up; but it’s most definitely for health reasons that I’ve given it up. I have a strong feeling – based, I suppose, on hope – that I may overcome my persistently Reluctant Gut. No more adherence to a pulses and vegetables diet; no more total avoidance of anything fatty in any way.
I’m a carnivore again.
Today I write, I warn you, entirely narcissistically (I almost got lost among those syllables: forgive me if I wandered off the path) and lengthily. There are those who will claim I do that all the time, of course; and to them I offer nothing more than a scornful laugh and a toss of the head ..
About aging. Or ageing, as I prefer to write it, incorrectly,
I am able to grasp that it happens to all of us – every single one. That no-one can prevent its happening to her or him (not even Cher the astoundingly beautiful but no longer; not even my absolute hero, Barack Obama). I know it and I accept it. But.
I want to do it at my own pace.
I don’t mean that I intend to eke it out so that I age at half the rate of anyone else. And I don’t mean that I want it to happen kind of evenly, with no rushing ahead or slowing down.
I mean that I do not want to be cast into an ageing mould created by other people.
I will turn into a doddering old fart when my brain is no longer able to prevent me from doing so — not when people around me think I am already one because of my circumstances.
Slight divergence ..
I am a resident under the auspices of an aged care facility: it is called Multicultural Aged Care Services, and bruited abroad as MACS (of course). MACS consists of two areas of care –
And there is a third part — us: eight fully independent rentals, known impressively as Independent Living Units; and we ILUs get no care at all. We are simply residents for whom MACS is our landlord. The units are very nice, very open, very much glass – too much for me, as in the mornings I can never find anywhere I’m able to be on my laptop comfortably .. reflections and light coming from all directions. (Did I hear you mutter “What a whinger !” ? You’re probably right ..) The units have gardens, and with the help and guidance of a long-time friend, mine is becoming something to look at.
So you can tell that this is a place I’m lucky to’ve found — although it found me, but that’s another story ..
The units’ residents are getting on; in fact, walkers are a common sight. Mind you, needing a walker doesn’t automatically mean the brain needs help ..
End of divergence.
I bounced in to MACS in early May 2019 with nary a thought about how I was pigeon-holing myself. For a good while I could see that I am more agile than everyone else, and definitely younger at heart as well as younger, physically; but “how meaningful is all that ?!”, I asked myself gaily as ILU neighbours would struggle past on their daily Very Short Walks.
Gradually I came to understand.
This place is turning me into An Old Woman. I mean, REALLY old. An irritable, demanding, churlish old woman.
And I am not ready to be an old woman.
Am I being clear ? – or merely confusing ?
Well .. I readily acknowledge that I’m 77; and many people will immediately think “So you ARE fucking old ! – what’s your problem ?!”.
It’s what’s going on inside my head. In there I’m still the same — interesting, funny, clever .. everything I once was, she said modestly. Well, I was, so there ! [grin]
I don’t want to be shut down before I’m ready because those around me see me as just another ancient – one more old duck in their aged care premises. I don’t want to have maintenance blokes turning up to check various bits of the unit without my having been advised they’re coming. I don’t want to have my mail seized and sat on by admin until it’s been judged as free from outside contamination (yesyes, I do get that this is something reflective of the times). I don’t like it when I ask for something to be repaired and someone from admin accompanies the repairman and expects to come in here for supervisory purposes. I don’t like being considered in that light.
I am an independent woman.
I lived alone from the time I was sent away from home in 1965 to the time I met my incomparable husband in 1974. And after he died, at the beginning of 2006, I was once again on my own. (For six years I was living off-planet, connected to it only by the thread joining me to my superb grief counsellor Dianne McKissock; and she had become able to pull on it hard enough to bring me down, then.) I’ve been living on my own, looking after myself and having no-one interfere in any aspect of doing that for the major part of my adult life.
I don’t believe I can wear this gradual loss of my identity any longer: it’s stealing the rest of my life away — gently, insidiously, thieving the years.
And I don’t have all that many left.
Whether or not any of this rave makes sense, I can only think to myself chissà ? Who knows if anyone of my generation can read and understand this, let alone anyone born after I was ..
I will agree that the lengthy Stage 3 restrictions are partly instrumental in forcing me to cogitate and eventually produce for my own scrutiny thoughts like these.
But do I agree, too, that once restrictions are lifted and people can once again visit, etc., my thinking will change and become less dissatisfied ..?
I do not. I know me.
The time for a reckoning draws near ..
.. which is to see the current ‘President’ voted out of office.
Now that Biden has chosen Kamala Harris as his running mate, it’s a President:Vice-President ticket that shows every sign of succeeding.
But I say that at the same time as the ‘President’ and his enablers are actively reducing the power of the US Postal Service to collect and deliver mail – specifically in order to deny mail-in voting. Yes, it’s true: the arsehole popped in a new chief there who is a donor to the Republicans, and is also an investor in a plurality of companies that are in direct competition with the USPS. Together with Trump’s bald-faced lies about the failure of the USPS over decades – it being the sole company for which in 2006 Dubya signed into law a requirement that it pre-fund health benefits for its employees (alive and not yet born !) for the next 75 years, so that it hasn’t been able to claw back the US$6B taken !!!!!, it’s not frightfully surprising that it’s languished somewhat ..
But I want to emphasize that the ‘President’ is a criminal lying bastard who thinks nothing at all of trying to wipe out one of the ways by which he can be defeated. And when he is, he’s going to foment another civil war.
Oh, and btw: I’m well aware that Biden is not the answer from heaven. But when you reflect that he will do his utmost to stop the rapidly increasing destruction of the Constitution and Government in the US, you can’t honestly hope that he doesn’t win.
I post this terrible fact because I need to.
Cat has been a totally joyous person in the craft world: her amazing discoveries regarding true moebius knitting and her subsequent illustrations of them for the benefit of all of us have been made in the spirit of happiness and generosity that has been her signature. Always.
All I can do is weep to think that she will be gone, so early and so .. unnecessarily.
She is telling us goodbye, here, in a manner entirely hers. When my American knitting friend Michele Lee Bernstein posted about this imminent loss, I followed the link to Cat’s post and read it with tears; and then I wrote to her via the special email link. I reminded her of one of her countless acts of kindness ..
Oh, by all the gods that man has ever invented, I shall miss her ..
You’ll be really sorry if you don’t watch this ..
Tonight I was watching a crocheting lady on YouChoob rabbiting on about her new “dreambox”. I mean like on and on and ON ..
Foolishly I decided to find out what a dreambox is.
How I wish I hadn’t !
Go here and look ..
Unless I win PowerBall or the Lottery (for neither of which I have ever bought a ticket) I shall not be able to afford one of these extraordinary and fascinating and WONDERFUL things. But come to think of it, I couldn’t even were I to suddenly come into a fortune: they’re made in the US, and sold there and in Canada and in the UK (for Europe). I have calculated that were I to persuade them to ship me the version I wanted, I’d be up for something like – oh, AUD8K.
[M.R. swoons away]
DOWNUNDER WITH BOODZ 